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Beaufort County-anchored congressional district merits support

Posted: July 9, 2011 - 11:10pm

Savannah

Editor’s note: Tom Davis is the State Senator for Beaufort County.

A couple of weeks ago, a new congressional plan for South Carolina pushed by the Myrtle Beach business community, in general, and by a Myrtle Beach state representative, in particular, unraveled in the South Carolina Senate. Much to their dismay, as reported by The State newspaper, “the state Senate approved a redistricting plan that creates a new 7th District that is centered in Beaufort County.”

South Carolina once had a 7th congressional district, but the 1930 census took it away. The recently completed census, however, showed our state’s population in the past ten years grew at a rate (15.3 percent) greater than the country as a whole (9.7 percent), and so on December 21, 2010, the federal Justice Department announced that our state’s 7th district would be restored.

Wesley Donehue, director of the state Senate Republican Caucus, summarized what happened next: “One of the worst kept secrets in state politics is that [Myrtle Beach] Rep. Alan Clemmons is running for the yet-unrealized Seventh Congressional District. Clemmons, as chairman of the [state House] subcommittee drafting the plan, had the ability to craft himself a district that he could win.”

And as Donehue goes on to explain, that’s exactly what Clemmons did, and the state House adopted his plan to create a new 7th district stretching from Myrtle Beach “into the Democratic Pee Dee area … a district created for a more moderate Republican.” (That state House-approved plan was developed in conjunction with and as recommended by Congressman Jim Clyburn and members of his staff, and it chops Beaufort County into two pieces, gutting its political relevance; more on that later.)

Clemmons is an honorable man; however, drawing a new district to suit the desire of a particular politician is horrible public policy. The state Senate Republican Caucus agreed, so it hired John Morgan, one of America’s leading electoral demographers, to draw a congressional plan that reflected South Carolina’s communities of interest, avoided gerrymandering and had the strongest chance of surviving the inevitable legal challenges in federal district court.

Morgan objectively reviewed the data, applied federal Justice Department criterion and drew a plan that, among other things, happened to anchor the new 7th district in Beaufort County. That plan became the state Senate Republican Caucus plan, and attorneys specializing in redistricting law formally recommended it to the state Senate’s special redistricting subcommittee. That subcommittee then held a meeting to consider it, and that’s when power politics reared its head again.

Unhappy that the new district might not be anchored in Myrtle Beach and include the Pee Dee, hundreds of people from that area went to the subcommittee meeting and demanded adoption of the Clemmons plan passed by the state House. The subcommittee had no such plan – none resembling it had even been recommended – but one was hurriedly prepared that very evening and quickly passed.

That hasty action was subsequently corrected by the full state Senate, which voted 25 to 15 to approve the state Senate Republican Caucus plan. State senators from all parts of the state – except those from Myrtle Beach and the Pee Dee – voted for the plan, for the same reason I did: it is the most logical plan for the state, the least gerrymandered and the one with the least number of county splits.

I also supported the state Senate-passed plan because it recognizes Beaufort County’s growing prominence. There is finally a chance for our county and its surrounding economic region (the counties of Jasper, Hampton and Colleton) to be the heart of a congressional district, rather than being forgotten tail-end appendages of metropolitan-dominated districts located to the north (Lexington-Columbia) or the northeast (Charleston).

I did not support that plan for personal reasons. During the congressional redistricting debate, I publicly stated that if the new district ended up centered in Beaufort County, I would not run for it. I am making progress as a state senator on things important to me and my constituents, and right now I can make more of a difference in Columbia than in Washington, D.C.

The South Carolina General Assembly will reconvene on July 26 to decide which chambers’ plan will prevail. I am convinced the one approved by the state House, based on the gerrymandering of raw politics, would be successfully challenged in federal district court and result in judge-drawn district boundaries – a nightmare scenario that must be avoided. I will do everything in my power to keep that from happening.